Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy

by Wendy Farley

Offering an alternative to classic Christian theodicies (justification of God's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil), Wendy Farley interprets the problem of evil and suffering within a tragic context, advocating compassion to describe the power of God in the struggle against evil.

Genres: Theology, Christianity

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Luke Hillier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciated this exploration of theodicy from Farley, which tries to carve out a path between classical and contemporary arguments for the question that every religious person is confronted with sooner or later: How to reconcile the tense coexistence of a good God and a world of devastating suffering. One thing I really appreciated throughout the reading was her avoidance of diatribes against other views (which would have been understandable, even); instead, she focuses pretty emphatically on what she is arguing for. That said, it does help to differentiate her contribution a bit here. She is deliberate from the outset to avoid any empty promises that she's offering an abstract solution that will effectively soothe the pains of humanity, denouncing that theodical inclination as a doomed false start. Instead, she affirms that suffering, and in particular "radical suffering" (her term for those instances where one's experience is so nightmarish that it does not only inflict pain, but has the power to corrosively dehumanize its suffer) is beyond explanation, justification, or atonement.

She goes on to articulate that the potential for it is unfortunately fundamental to the human experience. That's to say, in order for God to enact their "eros" nature as a creative creator, they had to create something of alterity, which comes to be the entire created order. But by nature of being other than God, all of being is limited by finitude and shaped by the intrinsic fragility and proclivity towards conflict that entails. This is the area where Farley's argument feels the least fresh; although her language is unique (or contemporary, as the title implies), it tracks with other theodical arguments I've heard before that essentially say that in order for God to truly love and be loved by humanity, they had to be given free will, so God's tied their hands behind the backs in accordance with their commitment to let it all play out unobstructed. I'm ultimately left unclear if that's exactly how Farley sees it. She does reject traditional notions of divine sovereignty, holding to God's inability to know how creation will unfold (an extension of its freedom), and ultimately I don't think that she endorses a traditional sense of omnipotence -- though she is much more reticent to abandon it than some process theologians. Instead, (and I don't necessarily think this is as different from process theology as she framed it), Farley reimagines divine love in accordance with God's commitments against coercive domination as the power of compassion, resistance, and redemption.

I really enjoyed Farley's articulation of the phenomenology of compassion. She argues that compassion is (1) grounded in sympathetic understanding of another's suffering that emerges from entering into suffering with another, (2) an enduring disposition one lives their life with, (3) a form of tragic love that is doomed to result in woundednesss but persists anyway, (4) driven by concerns for justice to catalyze efforts of resistance, and (5) a form of empowering power opposite the powers of domination that often initiate the suffering in the first place. Divine compassion, then, is God's primary means of engagement with our world, particularly in experiences of suffering. This engagement does not entail the interventionist endeavors of an omnipotent, sovereign deity, but rather the power of redemption, which fundamentally follows experiences contrary to God's desires for the world. Farley argues that God, propelled by compassion, is always responding to suffering towards the interlinked goals of resisting its causes (e.g. the Exodus, the Civil Rights Movement) and resisting its totality (the example that came to mind is the stunning example Melisa Raphael uses in The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust of female prisoners in Auschwitz washing each other's faces in order to maintain one's sense of dignity and humanity).

I really enjoyed the book, and found the writing in particular to be especially poetic, moving, and creative. The arguments themselves did not always feel as unique as Farley positioned them (at least after reading other process-adjacent theodicies, some of which I recognize now were written after this one). I also felt like the structure of the book was a weakness; the headings felt somewhat random, and it suffered from a fair amount of redundancy. Those are very nitpicky critiques, though! Overall, I really loved Farley's vision of God as one consumed with divine compassion, and found the book to be laced throughout with gorgeous language, punchy insights, and a cohesive argument that never sought to pacify the pangs of suffering but was still able to offer a theology imbued with tremendous hope and love in the midst of life's gravest sorrows.

[James Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. I recently finished John Swinton's Raging with Compassion as well. They both tackle the unsatisfying traditional arguments about theodicy (why is there evil in the world if God is all powerful and all good).

As a survivor of childhood violence and abject neglect i find that this question continues to hang around. I am not interested in a primarily rational or philosophical discussion of this question, if that means that human experience and reality are not central to the discussion. Both Swinton and Farley take the human experience of the absurdity and darkness of human suffering as significant points of engagement.

The response of Farley is that compassion from the standpoint of Scripture and tradition of the Christian faith is resistance to evil. And that God empowers the victim to survive, fight back, be smart and experience beauty despite all the shit that life can throw at you. Its a daring claim. But she is tremendously realistic and there is no Pollyannaish view of suffering here. I think this would pair well with reading any of the well known trauma books (Herman, Van Der Kolk, Perry, Mate etc).

This is encouraging, yet still a bit bracing to ingest. But it cuts through all the Christian or pop psychology bs and the statements that God turns "scars into stars" or nonsense like that.

[Coeli Lawhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have ever asked yourself how there can be a God when there is so much suffering in the world,or why a God would permit such suffering, this book is what your soul needs. I will be processing this work for years and will be re-reading it often to fully absorb all it has to offer. Full review to come on my MEDIUM account.

[Chris Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I read this by requirement of a grad school class, I deeply appreciated Wendy Farley's reworking of divine omnipotence into a power of love and compassion. While those two attributes may seem to empty God of any meaningful power, she makes clear that compassion and love include a fierceness of resistance to radical suffering and evil that is anything but weak. Her theodicy does not seek to explain how God can be loving, good and powerful in the face of suffering, but I actually think that is its greatest strength. Her vision of God's redemptive compassion is one that moves beyond pondering transhistorical ideas and invites people into participation in this compassion.